DC Buzz: Prosecutors supposed to throw strikes down the middle

Updated 2:44 pm, Friday, February 23, 2018

Once upon a time, Sen. Richard Blumenthal was Connecticut’s U.S. attorney, appointed by then-President Jimmy Carter way back in 1977.

Did that mean Blumenthal took his party loyalty with him into his new office, targeting Republicans in addition to the usual Mafiosi, drug traffickers and the like?

“As U.S. attorney, I attended no political functions, I met with virtually no political figures unless it was as part of their official duties,” Blumenthal said. “I drew a very, very strict line. I often joke that those were some of the best years of my life, because I attended no political functions.”

So how did he negotiate the balance between the political roots of his appointment and the role of non-partisan law enforcement official? “There was no balance,” he said. “The job was totally apolitical.”

I asked these questions of Blumenthal in the wake of concerted right-wing savaging of special counsel Robert Mueller over seemingly anti-Trump emails involving a senior FBI agent who subsequently was on his staff. Commentators also trotted out Democratic campaign donations of Mueller’s staff members.

Full disclosure: I knew Mueller back in the day when I covered DOJ and he was the top criminal adviser-prosecutor on the staff of then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. (Yes, a Republican, appointed by President George H.W. Bush.)

He was totally focused on rooting out criminals, whether they be Mexican cartel types or the terrorists who brought down Pan Am Flight 103. And one thing I learned: With only one exception (U.S. attorney in San Francisco, appointed under President Clinton), Mueller was a Republican appointee through and through.

President George W. Bush named him to head the FBI, and he reported for duty just days before the 9/11 attacks.

So it’s a bit of a stretch to paint Mueller as a Democratic partisan hack.

“I have total confidence that Mueller is going to make decisions without fear or favor to any political institution,” said Blumenthal, who also was Connecticut’s state attorney general for 20 years before being elected to the Senate. “He’ll rise above the political noise.”

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And speaking of Blumenthal, a picture of him meeting now-Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch back in February graced the front page of the Washington Post on Tuesday. The accompanying story related how President Donald Trump went ballistic when he heard that Gorsuch considered the president’s repeated attacks on the judiciary “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”

“The president worried that Gorsuch would not be ‘loyal,’” the Post reported, citing “several people with knowledge of the discussions.”

Trump told aides he was tempted to withdraw Gorsuch’s nomination, the Post said. Trump later tweeted the story was “FAKE NEWS.”

Not mentioned is how part of Trump’s liftoff involved blaming Blumenthal for misconstruing Gorsuch’s words and hauling out the old Vietnam bagatelle — in which Blumenthal indicated he was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam when he actually served in the Vietnam-era stateside.

“Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” Trump tweeted.

For Blumenthal, sensitive to this day about the Vietnam imbroglio, the irony is that Trump evidently considered yanking Gorsuch while accusing Blumenthal of lying about what transpired in his pre-confirmation meet-and-greet with the nominee.

“I was somewhat perplexed because at the time, he denied that Gorsuch said such a thing even though it was confirmed by everyone at the meeting.” Blumenthal said.

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Alabama’s newest senator, Doug Jones, is a Democrat. But will he hew to the party line or blaze his own trail as a representative of a deep-Red Dixie state?

One of the issues Connecticut Democrats will be watching is guns. Will Jones be another vote for “Fix NICS,” expanded background checks, and even the assault weapons ban?

Sen. Chris Murphy, the virtual conscience of Senate Democrats on the gun issue, sees Jones as a vote for Fix NICS, which gives states and federal agencies carrot-and-stick options for submitting more gun-disqualification records to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

He might even go for Murphy’s expanded background check bill, which would require checks in most private sales of guns including those at gun shows. But supporting an assault-weapons ban might be a bridge too far.

Jones considers himself a “Second Amendment guy” and, no surprise, owns a case full of guns. “We’ve got limitations on all constitutional amendments in one form or another,” Jones said in an MSNBC interview. “I want to enforce the laws that we have right now.”

Since the law establishing and funding NICS is already on the books, Jones will have no problem supporting improvements. Beyond that is anyone’s guess. But he’s bound to be less pro-gun than his defeated GOP opponent, Roy Moore, who showed up at a rally in a cowboy hat waving a snub-nose revolver.